Ever since Franco Moretti’s “Conjectures on World Literature” (New Left Review Jan-Feb 2000, 54-68), questions of how to read literary texts – close reading, distant reading, or surface reading – have once again moved into the central focus of methodological discussions in literary studies. But how to read texts written in multiple languages? Such a question (1) necessitates discussion of the tacit assumptions about the readability of multi-lingual texts; (2) provokes an attempt at a typology of multi-lingual texts; and (3) results – hopefully – in new suggestions for a scholarly practice of multi-lingual reading.

13.00-14.00: Lunch

14.15-16:00: Session 5: Multilingualism, Gender and the Other

Katie Jones (Swansea)
‘The Book Which Is Not One: The Language of the (m)Other in Ali Smith’s How To Be Both

Jesse van Amelsvoort (Groningen)
‘“Writing is a Way to be Free”: Narrating into Multilingual Europe, Zadie Smith and Najat El Hachmi’

At the European elections in May 2019 the Polish electorate confirmed its support for the authoritarian PiS party (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość, Law and Justice) which gained 24 seats out of 51. Poland is the major recipient of money from the EU Development and Infrastructure fund, yet PiS, in power since 2016, has launched itself on a collision course with the EU, restricting abortion, attacking LGBTQ rights, re-writing the constitution, controlling the media and rigging the High Court. PiS claims it is leading the way in protecting European Christianity from ‘replacement’ by Muslims and refuses to accept refugees.
Ultra-conservative Catholicism, political immaturity, long years of semi-isolation and opposition, the lack of a well-developed commercial middle-class, the reaction against everything connected to communism, a strong sense of marginality, alienation and victimisation, and the poor performance of the centre-left in a country with almost no history of democratic government have all contributed to the rise of ethno-nationalism in Poland. But how does the rise of the right show itself in language and literature? In this paper I will be looking at the tussle between a strong sense of traditional identity and the left-liberal reaction against ‘traditional values’ and how it shapes the contemporary Polish literary scene.